Did he not participate to a degree in the editing of the first film?
He did and was also involved with the editing on ESB and ROTJ. Which was part of the point. He’s interested in editing to a fault because he’s less interested in screenwriting and production. One of the reasons why AOTC had so many reshoots is because George didn’t really figure out he needed important connective elements of the plot and character arcs until he started editing.